Flesh color – that’s why it’s grey

-Some things are as safe as a bank. The cheese is yellow, the liver paste is grey-brown and the ham is pink. That is: not always.

On the shelf at the Coop, we saw several times pink cuts of pork with a grey-brown hue in spots along the edge. Is it safe to eat and why does this happen?

– The gray layer is not dangerous, but of course it looks unappetizing and is a quality deviation that we are working on, Harald Christiansen, communications manager at Coop, tells DinSide.

He points out that discoloration of products is not an isolated phenomenon for Coop, but something that many people experience.

We’ve been trying to keep an eye on the pork rack for the past couple of weeks, but we haven’t seen anything like it anywhere else. But maybe you have? Feel free to send us a photo or tip via email.

Packaging

What sets Coop’s pork packs apart from other chain brands is the packaging. Coop’s ham packaging is a mix of plastic and gray paper. Could that be part of the explanation for the color change?

Christiansen explains that the gray color of pork is a complex problem that they are working on in collaboration with the product supplier.

Several factors can affect the product, such as salt content, gas composition, pH and light intensity, all of which can affect the color of products containing nitrite over time, Christiansen says.

– It is important to show that this is not dangerous or of poor quality. It just looks a bit gray and boring.

It has a lot to do with expectations.

Our relationship with what natural meat color is has also changed. In 2004, the European Union banned the packaging of meat with carbon monoxide, as this might fool consumers into thinking the meat was fresher and fresher than it actually was.

The first month after cutting off the gas Sales decreased by ten percentaccording to NRK, but as we got used to the new color, sales rose and stabilized.